"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Three lessons from the Salt Lake City shooting

Radical Islam, uncontrolled immigration, and gun control. All three of these issues made (or possibly made) an appearance at the Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City, Utah. An 18 year old man named Sulejmen Talovic - a Bosnian Muslim immigrant - opened fire in the mall and killed six people.

Lesson #1: Radical Islamic violence might have made yet another appearance in our country.Did Talovic do what he did in the name of Allah and Jihad? Too soon to know for sure. However, I am definitely beginning to notice a pattern of incidents, including this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this. At what point does it stop being a bunch of random incidents, and instead become a piece of a much larger picture?

Lesson #2: We need to seriously rethink our immigration policiesWhy was Sulejmen Talovic in the United States? Where were the safeguards that are supposed to keep people like this from our shores in the first place? Our country changed forever when the Immigration Act of 1965 was passed. After none other than Senator Teddy Kennedy swore up and down that this law would not change the face of America, the Immigration Act of 1965 did exactly that. It reversed the strict immigration policies that had been in place since the mid-1920s. During that 40 year interval between 1924 and 1965, our country had taken a breath and worked to assimilate the millions of immigrants who had arrived on our shores since the 1880s. Our country's doors have been wide open ever since, with so many immigrants, both legal and especially illegal, coming in that we have been like a person trying to drink from a fire hose. Now before you starting slapping me with the "xenophobe" and "racist" labels (lefties often like to call me names rather than put forward a cogent argument), let me make it perfectly clear that I am all for legal immigration. If someone from another country wants to come to our country, adopt our American culture, be self-sufficient, and not bring in any diseases that we eradicated decades ago, then I say bring 'em on in, welcome to the United States of America! If they want to come to our country and keep one foot in their former country, not learn our language, live on the public dole, and infect our citizens with drug-resistant Tuberculosis, Whooping Cough, Polio, Leprosy, and all these other archaic diseases that are making a comeback, then I'm sorry, they must find another country. Oh, and also, if they want to come to our country in order to walk into a shopping mall and kill our fellow citizens, perhaps that shouldn't be allowed either. Immigrants to our country used to be screened; this needs to happen once again.

Lesson #3: The only thing that can stop a criminal with a gun is someone else with a gunI already know what the gun control crowd is thinking about this incident in Salt Lake City. I can hear their whiny voices pounding against my skull: "Well, if guns were banned, this Sulejmen guy would never have been able to do what he did." Nope, sorry folks. The bad guys will always be able to get guns. All the gun laws do is disarm the law-abiding citizens who are afraid of being arrested and having everything they have worked for in life ruined if they are caught with an illegal firearm. All the newspapers and city officials are hailing the good samaritan off-duty cop who brought Sulejmen's shooting spree to a premature end. And how pray tell did this off-duty cop do that? With a gun of course. Here is a quote from the afore-linked CNN article that sums up how things might have gone differently were it not for the heroics of an armed private citizen:

Sulejmen Talovic wanted "to kill a large number of people" and probably would have killed many more if not for the off-duty officer who confronted him Monday evening, Police Chief Chris Burbank said.

How did an assistant principal stop Luke Woodham from killing more students at a high school in Pearl, Mississippi in 1997? By going to his car and retrieving a gun, which he put to Woodham's head while Woodham was reloading. How did two men at Appalachian Law School in West Virginia stop a murdering gunman a couple of years ago? They went to their cars, got their guns, and aimed them at the murdering gunman. How could Susanna Gratia Hupp have saved dozens of lives - including those of her parents - at Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas in 1991? If she had been able to carry on her person, the gun she had left in the car because of Texas' gun laws, she would have been able to shoot George Hennard as he prowled the inside of the restaurant, shooting people at will. The final body count for that incident was 24. What finally ended that incident? A police sniper's gun. One way or another, a gun ends these incidents. It's just a matter of when the gun gets there. Will it be a private citizen's firearm that is on the scene at the beginning of the incident, or a policeman's firearm, used minutes or hours later when the carnage has already taken place. The mall in SLC was lucky to have an off-duty cop to help save the day. What about if he hadn't been there? How many more people would have been killed by this shooter? The way to cut down on violence is not to disarm innocent people and leave them at the mercy of the predators of our society. The way to cut down violence is to allow law-abiding people to carry the means to defend themselves. The supposed "Wild West" of the 1800s saw a many fewer murders than we see in our country today. What changed? Back then, just about everyone was armed, so committing a murder was mostly a very expensive proposition. Today, life is cheap, as most would-be victims out there are defenseless against criminal predators who are not afraid of breaking laws against theft and murder, let alone some silly little gun law.

In the Fort Collins Coloradoan there was no mention that the guy was Muslim. Imagine it's 1943 and Hiru Yamamoto opens fire in a mall in UT and the paper fails to mention he is Japanese! We'll just overlook that little detail, no reason to think there was a connection between being at war with these people and having them shooting us in our own malls. If I was the Dad of one of those people killed I would be plenty angry at lefty newspapers failing to report the obvious.

2nd Anonymous, you didn't listen to a word I said did you? You just saw my criticism of unlimited immigration and then your knee violently jerked.

I said that I have no problem with immigration that contributes to our country. Allowing in everybody doesn't qualify as a smart immigration policy.

You bet our country was built by immigrants; but it was built by immigrants who came here to make something of themselves on their own, not to live on the government teat or commit crime. If you can't tell the difference between the two, then I don't know what else to say to you.

However, should a private citizen take the law into their hands, and use a personal firearm to take down a critter who is randomly shooting people, SAD to say, but in today's pc/leftist society, wouldn't the STATE then turn upon said citizen for use of deadly force? Or, the co-spawn of the critter sue action citizen for killing their critter-kin? Again, I agree with your post, just playing devils adovocate here....

You know everybody is different. We can't judge all Bosnian/Muslim Immigrants now because of what this little boy did. From what I am hearing is that he was picked on so badly in school that he ended up dropping out. He was picked on daily because of various reasons. It sort of reminds me of Columbine except in this case he is an Immigrant.

I am a Bosnian Immigrant however I have been a US Citizen for years now. I went to College and am in Law School now.

There is good and bad in every culture. I am pretty sure he didnt do this because of allah because the muslim religion in Bosnia is very different from the one in Iraq.

Excuse my grammer, it's 2 am and I've had an exhausting Vday but I came across this and just wanted to put my own opinion.

When I was 18 I thought I was pretty "cool" but looking back now I was still a kid! Most 18 year olds are pretty confused...go off to college and have no clue what they are wanting out of life.

I just spoke to some people in SLC and this guy Sulejman witnessed 4 of his cousins and grandpa get severly beated and killed when he was only 6 years old. Apparantly his grandpa hid him behind some closet so he wouldn't get killed as well.

I am not trying to say what he did was right, it was wrong on all levels but clearly he went through a lot in his 18 years of life.

Also, you calling it Radical Islam is very wrong because like I've said before our islamic views differ from the islamic views in the Middle East. Yes, he was a Bosnian Muslim and I have no right to say why he did such an aweful thing but I am pretty positive it had nothing to do with Islam.

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I am native of the mountains of northern California; 12-year veteran of the U.S. Army and California National Guard; Secondary School History teacher; Husband; Father of Two; and three-time honoree as Time Magazine's Person of the Year (2003, 2006, 2011).